Grains of Sand

Google Images Lies and deceit. That’s what Genesis 27 is about. The fact that the Bible records the shameful deception of an old man and the breakdown of a family, causes some people to believe that God gives at least tacit approval to bad behaviour. They fail to see the bottom line. The Bible acknowledges that men are sinful. It clearly shows the devastating consequences of those sins. It makes no attempt at a cover-up. At the same time, it speaks loudly about a God who takes even the sinful actions of men and works out His purposes despite those sins. In Genesis 27 we are told how Jacob, at the instigation of his mother, deceived Isaac and won the blessing that belonged to Jacob’s older brother, Esau. It’s not the first clue we have to just how dysfunctional this family was. In Genesis 25 we find parents who play favourites, and we discover how little Esau thought about his privileges as the eldest. He sold his rights as firstborn to Jacob for a bowl of stew—that was Jacob’s pric...

Google Images One of the things I like about the Bible, and one of the things that people criticize about it, is the honesty with which the Scriptures deal with people. I’m sure we don’t have all their “wrinkles” recorded for us, but there are enough to make us realize that even the saints weren’t always so saintly. That’s an encouragement for us because we then know the extent to which God showed them mercy and grace, and can be assured that the same will extended to us in our weakness. To those who criticize this “revelation,” I can only suppose it is because it robs them of the excuse, “Well, they were perfect and I’m not, so since my case is different I don’t have to pay attention to what the Bible teaches.” Anyway, in Genesis 20, we have an example of the unsaintly act of one of the prominent saints of the Bible. To add to the problem, Abraham is about to be caught doing the same thing that he got in trouble for doing before. It seems he had not learned the lesson. One more, f...

Google Images Can you keep a secret? In God’s world there are lots of mysteries, but few secrets. A mystery is defined as: something that is difficult or impossible to understand or explain. A secret is something not known or seen or not meant to be known or seen by others. There is a lot that we can’t explain about God. There are some things that He doesn’t mean us to know. With our usual insatiable need to control everything, even information, we try hard to explain the unexplainable and to dig up and reveal the secrets of the Almighty. We often hear phrases like: “I have no secrets” or “My life is an open book.” But everyone has something he doesn’t want anyone to know about. There is at least one incident in my life that I will go to my grave without revealing (don’t ask because I won’t tell!). We often keep secrets in order to prevent others from being hurt. Sometimes we keep secrets so that we won’t be hurt. Unhappily there are secrets we keep that cover up evil in our lives ...